The inescapable and interactive relation of art and technology: an ongoing cultural and artistic...

The inescapable and interactive relation of art and technology:

an ongoing cultural and artistic determinism

Logic and Utopia

Korthi Andros July, 26 2014

Kostas Theologou NTUA, [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Abstract

Artworks are being promoted and developed regarding new technology applications. This constitutes an inevitable technological determinism in Art (new codes of expression and value, enriched with a new aesthetic and ethical content). Our paper focuses on the way technology facilitates art to create a new reality through new imaging. there is a necessity for new technological media in artistic creation, as well as the necessity of new technological applications and methods to be embodied in works of art.

26/7/2014 Kostas Theologou 2

The motivation and the point

Art as Form of Reality means not the beautification of the given, but the construction of an entirely different and opposed reality (Marcuse, 1972: 147). The aesthetic vision is part of the revolution; it is a vision of Marx (1884): ‘the animal constructs (formiert) only according to need; man forms also according with the laws of beauty’. And tools of construction and technological applications inescapably interact with the art work itself and affect crucially the final creation, in form, construction, use and inspiration.


The parts of our work in progress 1. A concise survey of the development of technological media

in Art from Renaissance to Modernism, which is skipped in this presentation;

2. the rationale regarding technological determinism which is included in every discussion concerning visual arts

3. it comprehensively refers to the necessity of this interactive relationship between the creation of art and the selection of new technological applications as product of a sole, universal one,

4. it discourses the contribution of artistic creation to the technological development.

5. It concludes to the inevitable configuration and identity formation (both collectively and individually) for the spectators, as a result of a still undefined (unspoken) artistic or cultural determinism.


Innovation and identity formation

The argument in this presentation concerns the correlation between art and technology as an already fundamental constituent for both key-missions of the information society: the enhancement of innovation and the construction of identity on individual and collective level. Identity is defined not merely by the identity quality of the art-work or its creator, but what is not adequately studied and discussed, is the issue of mechanisms and processes forming individual and collective identities to the spectators, the audience


Technological determinism in the discourse on visual arts

Technological determinism in the discourse on visual arts Technological determinism-which is mostly a theory on society and not so much on technology itself (Edgerton, 1999: 11-136) emerges in general discussions on the relationship between social change/shift, science and technology and is summarized in the belief that science and technology are autonomous and represent the main force of change in society. modernism had a complex but clear and concrete relationship with technology and change. Being modern means to be within an environment which promises adventure, strength, joy, development, transformation of the self and of the surrounding word, and at the same time, it threatens to destroy everything we possess, everything we know and everything we are (Berman,1981).


Post-modern boundaries Postmodernism was unreservedly post-technological and rejected any Utopic promises on modernity and was uneasy with technology. the postmodern theory had already been developed in the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of the 1980s, so, the future role of the global web, the internet, remained largely vague. Networks and media had barely changed within half a century. With the exception of colour television, videotapes and cable television, mass media in the 1980s were no significantly different than those in the 1950s (Lyotard, 1984). Postmodern theoreticians described a culture, in which television prevailed; computers were an abstract idea, which came from a mediated, an intermediated knowledge about the mainframes. Postmodern theoreticians sensed the penetrating and diffusing omnipotence of the Internet and came across an irresistible object though unable to live within it, or see beyond its horizon; they described it simply with terms defining it as compared to the capital and as a vague product of the mass media. Somehow, Internet was the boundary for the postmodern.


The necessity of the interactive relationship between the artistic product and the technological applications

Art is conceived as an application of creativity and artistic creation (material objects, performances, installations or digital syntheses) are the products or the results of such an applied creativity. Best artistic products, works of art, challenge our values, provoke our senses and offer an insight enlarging the way we think of things. So, it’s possible to reflect on the value of the interface between two clearly distinct sectors and on the wisdom derived from the stake of an apparently logical dichotomy. In Information Society though, such an intertwining is rather popular and there are several examples of sectors being entwined, while considered diverse until now.


innovation and identity issues Raymond Williams formulates the transformations of the terms “art” and “technology” underlining their complex interrelation with the equally dramatic changes in the use of the terms “science”, “culture” and many others (Williams, 1976). Leo Marx gives another account on the change in the use of the terms technology and science; he claims that in the dissidence among the members of the literate élite of the West between the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries the idea of the progress seems very often to be typically depicted through the developments in scientific knowledge; but, in more folk level culture, progress was depicted in exemplary ways by innovations applied in familiar practices and crafts. the emerging modern meaning of technology signifies the priorities of a commonplace practicality in craftsman’s life, as represented by the tools, the instruments or the machines in the discourse on progress.


20th century- an era of rapid changes

offered us many fruitful encounters and interactions between art and technology. The machine age introduced several alternative versions in materials and concepts on artistic creation and construction. the history of technology and art had a decisive turn in 1966, when EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) an artists’ group was established in USA: it meant to coordinate artists and mechanics/engineers in various projects; the apparent gap between the engineer/mechanic and the artists was covered for the first time. Billy Klüver, an electrical engineer, was head of this movement and an equally active member of the contemporary artistic scene. The original and fundamental goal was to provide the artists with new materials of technology and coordinate mixed groups in joint art-projects. Klüver acknowledged many common features between art and science, both focused on investigating life in its complexity .


Artistic creation and technology with ETA the engineer widened his visual field and get involved with problems not pertaining to the rational problems he deals in his professional life; the artists widens the engineer’s perspective.

The artists’ catalytic contribution in the formation of technology: they enhance the humanization of technology and this is done in an automatic way, because they are artists; they also contributed in processes related with innovation and identity is also catalytic. technologies in the age of information are generally developed and diffused in the market aiming to a short-term profit and, usually, without a concern about the consequences. The serious artist (McLuhan, 1964: 19) understands uniquely the impact of these technologies and contributes to their formation from his own standpoint of values and beliefs, potentially related with his profit or with his concern about humanity.


Individual and Collective Identity Formation

Art developed in the 20th century focused on the importance of interaction, performance, installation and audience participation. The emergence of a media arts aesthetics, in which networking, interface engines and sensors are of gradually more importance in artistic creation raises questions pertaining to the state of being artist and to the nature of his work. Technological interrelations especially in the field of visual arts, demolish previous aesthetics and older cultural categories. The technological interrelations are being beamed through sensory and hyper-sensory channels, taking advantage of the multifarious methods in which proprioception, tactility, emotivity and body language become forms and, in all, constitute indications for a return of the bio-senses.


Citizens and élites Castells distinguishes dominant world élites dwelling in the space of flows from people resisting the debarment of financial, cultural and political rights (Castells, 1997: 356). The élites are described as citizens of the world (with no identity), while the latter as attached to their communal identity. Identities in a world of global flows become more concrete and individualistic, being unable to acquire “communal characteristics” for the persons who wish to get hold with these new identities. Art and artistic production will gradually shelter more identity features and will provide the tools for such an identity formation. This enhances the social, political and educative responsibility of the artist vis-à-vis the social milieu in which he creates his works.


Art, technology and a new reality

we agree with Marcuse’s concept of Art as Form of Reality, that it means not the beautification of the given, but the construction of an entirely different and opposed reality (1972: 147).

The aesthetic vision is part of the revolution

And tools of construction and technological applications inescapably interact with the art work itself and affect crucially the final creation, in form, construction, use and inspiration.


The inescapable and interactive relation of art and technology:

an ongoing cultural and artistic determinism

Logic and Utopia

Korthi Andros July, 26 2014

Kostas Theologou NTUA, [email protected]

Thank you for your attention

mailto:[email protected]

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